O

by Steven Carroll

  Dominique has never thought of herself as attractive. And at thirty-seven she feels that the train to middle age has left the platform. Except when they are in their room, where she feels ageless. Where what the world calls time, age and beauty are meaningless. But all the same this young woman is an intimation of the inevitable: one day his eyes will stray and one day his body will follow.

  And what will she do then? For this forest creature, immense in spirit, is the great love of her life. What will she do if he rises one day from their table and leaves; walks from their room and never comes back? She barely knows. She might even die in a cold, alien world like the girl in the story.

  As she walks home she mulls over Jean’s pronouncement, No woman could ever . . . It is a thought that will keep returning: at home, at work, in their room. A thought that won’t go away.

  Observing the shops, the green trees and the public buildings now free of the spidery flags that crawled all over them for four long years, she understands why it’s tempting to say that normality has returned – when she knows full well it hasn’t. For as much as everybody might like to imagine they can pick things up where they left them, like leaving behind the macabre visions of a long afternoon sleep, they’re dreaming. The lost paradise of the past is always that. Just when they ought to be most awake, they’ve slipped back into a comforting dream. She leaves a wine shop behind, the owner’s eyes glazed like someone trying to remember a line from an old song from long ago . . .

  Part Four

  Story of O

  Paris, early 1950s

  13.

  Flowers are on Dominique’s mind as she walks through the rain, umbrella up, along the boulevard Saint-Michel to Gallimard, where she now works. It is a damp spring day, the flowers and the newly unfurled leaves on the trees in the parks and gardens droop with the weight of the rain. She recently read a story by a German writer about a returned soldier in an unnamed, bombed-out German city, who one spring day, after dreaming of flowers, leapt from his bed, went straight to a market and bought all the flowers he could with the last of his money. He then set up a street stall, and by midday he had sold all his flowers and made a nice profit. The next day he did the same thing, but this time he only spent some of the profit on flowers. Armed with flowers, he returned to the same spot and sold all his flowers by midday again. And so on it went, and six months later he was a rich man. His stall bloomed into a shop, then another and another.

  His dream was a moment of illumination: the people hungered for flowers as much as bread. Possibly even more so. He was sure of this because he hungered for flowers, and if he did, others would. But as his stall became one shop, then another and another, he became so busy he lost his hunger for flowers.

  But the story makes the reader hungry for flowers, and that is why Dominique veers off the boulevard, her usual path to work, and heads for a market street not far off where she can buy a bunch of marigolds to brighten her room: a vase, she imagines, of indoor suns. And it is as she turns into the market street, visualising her poky little room thus illuminated, that she sees him.

  Jean is seated in a small café, at the window, sipping a morning coffee. And as much as she should be gladdened by the sight of him, he is not alone. He is sitting with a young woman. He is animated, his hands talking as much as he is, and the woman is laughing. And although Dominique is standing only ten feet or so away from them, Jean does not notice her, or anything else around for that matter, because he is concentrating on the young woman in front of him: concentrating on impressing her and conjuring laughter from her. Open the door to laughter, Dominique knows, and all the other doors follow.

  She can feel herself wilting, her whole frame bowing with the blow. Her mind is blank, her face, she is sure, the same. And because the last thing she wants is to be seen, the humiliation of him looking up and catching her standing there, she hurries into a side street, leaving them to their laughter, all thoughts of flowers, vases full of flaming suns, forgotten. The anticipated joy of seeing Jean at the office gives way to this numb dismay.

  Paris, she tells herself, and not for the first time, is a small town after all. Especially this part. She walks through the rain, not bothering to put her umbrella up. Somewhere along the way she must have collapsed it. She can’t remember. Water drips from the rim of her hat and soaks through her coat but she hardly notices. When she finally comes across a small park she sits in a shelter, the initial impact of the blow having lessened, her mind now less blank. Two men are playing chess at a table beside her, oblivious of the rain; another is watching every move. She breathes deeply of the damp spring scents around her. Hyacinths, she notes, telling herself that it could mean anything. The young woman could be a writer. He may have read her work (he receives so many manuscripts every day), and he may simply have been advising her. Why not? But he didn’t look as though he was giving her advice. Then again, why can’t advice be accompanied by laughter?

  She has always told herself that she is not the jealous kind, any more than she is the marrying kind. Likewise, she has always told herself that she has no right to deny him, or anybody else for that matter, pleasure. Heaven knows, life is hard and pleasure brief. And as hard as it is to take in that the inevitable day when his eyes would stray and his body follow has finally arrived, she will stay true to what she has always believed. After all, he has a wife, a sick one, and has Dominique ever properly considered her? It’s not a question she has ever really wanted to consider, and still doesn’t. She has met her a few times. Innocent meetings. Some time ago and she’s not sure now what she looks like. There are no photographs on Jean’s desk or his office walls. She has always been a distant presence.

  So, what to do? The rain soaks the park, and seems to soak into her bones. If she were not so numbed she might feel cold. The chess players are deep in thought and she can’t help but admire their concentration. And it is then that she tells herself to concentrate too, and like a player contemplating her next move she addresses the question: what to do?

  She is in her early forties, what society calls a middle-aged woman (never mind that Jean is now in his sixties). And she has never thought of herself as particularly beautiful. Her allure (if that is the word) is her imagination. Her intelligence. But what is that compared to young beauty? What can she offer?

  Her body is drenched but the flame of an idea is flickering in her mind. Perhaps. Perhaps she is not powerless, after all. She sits, sheltered from the rain, breathing in the rich, heady scents of the garden, the scent of the flowers made richer and more powerful by the rain. And when she rises from the park bench and steps out from the shelter it is with the deep pleasure that those chess players must feel when, after much thought and struggle, they arrive at the perfect move at the perfect moment.

  It has always been literature and words and the world of the imagination that has drawn them together. She will write the kind of book that he likes to read, the kind he thinks no woman can write. And it will be such a love letter, the likes of which has never been written. Like Scheherazade, she will spin such a tale.

  She leaves the park and wanders out into the street, the spring rain easing, patches of sun glittering on the rooftops and streets. Her clothes are heavy, but her steps are light.

  * * *

  That evening in their room she does not mention seeing him in the café. They do not make love, instead they lie in bed, talking about the day’s events, like a married couple might at the end of the day. And it is while he is recounting his movements that she waits for him to tell her. But he says nothing of it, only how a famous writer is feeling neglected, and how fragile these scribblers are. And even though he says scribblers with an affectionate sarcasm, it is a surprise, almost a shock, to hear him say it at all.

  And she, in her turn, keeps to herself what she saw. The blow to the heart and the resolution she has made. They continue talking like husband and wife at the end of the working day, smoking and sharing a drink. They have been coming to this
room and rooms like it for almost ten years. His desire is waning. It’s still there, but lacks heart. And what is desire without heart? And while part of her enjoys lying in bed talking like this, both speaking their minds and not speaking them, she is also asking herself are they not large? Beyond small talk? For she has always thought that what we call small talk is what people do when they’re avoiding big talk.

  There is something sad about the evening, a blue hour indeed, tinged with the blues. A phrase from a love song, a smoky woman’s voice, floats across her mind, just passing through . . . a blue song for a blue hour . . . while Jean talks. And between mention of publishers and critics and writers (no politics, there never is), she finds herself longing for the danger and the urgency of those early days when the minutes were important. And by the time they stand and prepare to leave (they don’t have to dress because they never undressed in the first place), she has become convinced that she is losing him. It is nothing for his eyes to stray, but when his body follows she fears it is not so much a distraction or a diversion as the beginning of the end.

  She turns to him in the doorway. ‘I would like to meet you in the morning.’ She nominates an hour and a place, and adds, ‘I’ll pick you up and we’ll drive some place: the river, the Bois.’

  He shrugs as if to say this is all very mysterious, but agrees. Seems to like the mystery. ‘Why?’

  ‘I have a surprise for you.’

  ‘I don’t like surprises,’ he says.

  ‘I know, but I think you’ll like this.’

  14.

  Late that night in her bedroom, her parents asleep in the next room, she begins. She is curled up in bed, still dressed, with the blankets over her, and with only the vaguest idea of what she will write, she opens her notebook, takes her pencil (so as not to stain the bed sheets) and begins.

  From the moment she puts the first words down on the page she writes the way you do in certain dreams: those dreams in which the most difficult and complex things suddenly become effortless, and the dreamer is left wondering why on earth it ever seemed so hard.

  Over the next few hours a story forms, so quickly that the only thing stopping her from getting it onto the page is the time it takes to write it all down. She has never written like this before, for it is pouring from her, like, she imagines, exchanges between couples who store up and don’t say what they want to until they reach the point when they must. Then the words gush from them, uncensored and uninterrupted. This is how she is writing.

  There is a young woman, known only as ‘O’, walking through a city park with her lover. It is summer: a golden one, like that last summer before the war. Late in the day. But this is no ordinary stroll. Her lover has something planned, and because she loves him she does as he asks. He reminds her that she can say no at any time. Does she consent? O nods. Yes, she does, reminding him that she does this for love, for him. They come to a car on the lawns of the park. He tells her to get in. He sits beside her in the back seat. A stranger drives. Nobody speaks. She is being taken to a secret destination.

  But she is not anxious, more curious. Her lover turns to her as if about to whisper words of tender affection in her ear. But his manner is distant, his voice almost abrupt. She is to remove her stockings and panties. When she has done so, he brings out a knife. He leans towards her as if to kiss. Instead, the blade cuts the straps of her brassière, brushing her arm as he withdraws his hand, holding the brassière. He then blindfolds her and fastens her hands behind her.

  Dominique stops for a moment, but no more. The story is writing itself and she must keep up with it. It baffles her, mystifies her, even troubles her, but keeps on pouring from her, unfolding of its own accord. She is not only mistress of the tale, but with every word feels herself to be mistress of her fate.

  The knife is put away for now. O is led up a path. They enter a grand house, a mansion or a château, one door opens then another. Her lover removes her blindfold. She is standing in a large, dark room. They leave her, hands still tied. The cold touch of the blade still fresh on her skin.

  At this point there is a knock on Dominique’s bedroom door. Her mother pushes the door open, peering in.

  ‘It’s late,’ her mother says.

  ‘Is it?’ Dominique replies, reflexively covering the page.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother says, puzzled and looking about the room as if someone were there. ‘Don’t forget your cousins are coming on the weekend.’

  ‘No.’ Dominique smiles. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘They will be pleased to see you.’

  ‘And I will be pleased to see them.’

  Mother and daughter stare at each other. Finally, her mother breaks the impasse. ‘What are you writing?’

  Dominique ponders the question a moment before replying. ‘A letter.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘It’s a good hour for letters.’

  Her mother closes the door. Dominique returns to her notebook, at first afraid she has lost the spell, but quickly finds herself back deep in the story of this woman called O, this mystery that she has conjured up with the wand of her pencil.

  O is where she left her. She peers about the darkened room, then squints up at Dominique. What now? Where do we go from here? I’m waiting. O doesn’t have long to wait. After being bathed and perfumed, it happens very quickly. Men enter, she doesn’t know how many. She is pushed to her knees and taken by them, one then another, or at the same time, in any way they choose, through any of her orifices, often abruptly and brutally. Because of the darkness she has no way of knowing if or when her lover took her, or the driver. Or whoever else did. When they are finished with her a light is brought into the room, and she observes the group of men casually standing about or sitting in grand chairs, talking and smoking as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.

  When they turn to her, she is reminded by one of the men that she is there willingly and that she can leave any time she wants. You are here, she is told, to surrender and submit to a force outside yourself. It is a challenge, and O looks to Dominique as if for advice or her opinion, then shakes her head defiantly. Proud, one of the men says, she’s proud. Submissive, but proud. It is said in a tone that suggests we’ll see how proud. He then produces a riding crop, dripping water, a smile on his face as he lightly taps his palm with the crop.

  When Dominique looks up from her writing, it is early in the morning. The house is silent. Her parents are in the next room asleep. Her son with his father. She rises from the bed, stretches, then walks to her window, looking down onto the communal garden, illuminated under a full moon. After she has strolled round the room and rested, she returns to the bed, the notebook and this tale that she barely recognises as hers.

  Over the next days or weeks O loses track of time – she is often left alone in her nun-like cell – and surrenders herself completely to the rules of the house and the wishes of its masters. She enters a trance-like state, and gradually becomes aware of a rising sense of her power and of her splendour, the splendour of her body, of her whole being, the men like moths to the flame drawn back to her again and again. And, Dominique becomes increasingly convinced, her instruments. O not their slave, but they hers.

  One day her lover tells her that her time is up, that she is leaving that very day. He tells her in earnest tones that the whole time she was being prepared to meet someone. And very soon, she will. Can she guess who it is? O stares knowingly at her lover, then nods and quietly says, ‘Sir Stephen.’

  An hour later, Dominique rests her pencil on the opened notebook and leaves her tale there. It is morning. She has written through the night. Her parents are rousing themselves. Outside, the sound of motor cars, along with the clatter of rubbish collection trucks in the street. The bizarre, grotesque and fantastical world she has conjured up in the night fades. Reality returns. She closes her notebook and places it on her bookshelf between well-read volumes of Proust.

  She rises, straightens her bed, goes to he
r wardrobe and puts on a fresh set of clothes, just as she would if she’d slept through the night and was getting ready for work. Dressed, she goes to her mirror and washbasin where she splashes her face, the very face that once bore the bruises and bloodied skin of a doll’s house marriage to a knight whose rage knew neither satisfaction nor shame. It is a brief flash, a passing memory of another time and another woman: another self she has since left behind. The cold water washes the memory away, tingling her skin. She combs her hair, applies her make-up and prepares for the day.

  She takes her notebook containing the story that has poured from her all night, calls to her parents as she leaves and tells them she has an early start and will have breakfast near work. Her car, which she has recently bought, an old Peugeot that was probably used by the Germans during the war, sits waiting on the street. She checks her watch. The hour is approaching; she drives the car towards the arranged corner where Jean will be waiting, her surprise tucked away in her satchel.

  15.

  It is early, the traffic thin. She pulls over. Jean gets in and they drive to a spot facing the river in the heart of the city, not far away. The Île Saint-Louis is directly in front of them; to their left, the bow of the Île de la Cité, like an old battleship, cruises towards them.

  He turns to her. ‘Well, what is this surprise?’

  She smiles. For a man who doesn’t like surprises he seems eager. Dominique takes the notebook from her satchel, saying, ‘I told you I too could write the stories you like.’

  He stares at the notebook dumbfounded. ‘So you did.’